Category: Bread, pastry and pasta

A wonderful savoury biscuit, made with a dough including flour, water, yeast, olive oil, and fennel seeds. Shape the dough into small rings and then bake. Very easy to make and delicious — what’s not to like? And if you think that the result reminds you of something, you’d be right; the biscuits are probably the medieval ancestor of the Italan fennel taralli!

This is the Andalusian variant of today’s qatayif, which is a folded crepe with a filling of cream or nuts especially associated with Ramadan all over the Muslim world. Recipes for this type of crepe can be found in a number of cookery books. The one recreated here is from a 13th-century Tuniso-Andalusian treatise. The typical feature — then as now — is that the batter is cooked on only one side.

The word qatayif — though the linguistically correct spelling is, in fact, qata’if (قطائف) — is the plural of qatifa (قطيفة), which denoted a kind of cover to be wrapped around the body when sleeping. This type of qatayif was called mushahhada, which is derived from shuhd, meaning ‘comb honey’.

It starts off with semolina, hot water, yeast and salt. Once you have a batter of the desired consistency, it is dropped into a pan in the form of small round crepes. Once little holes appear on the top, i.e. the uncooked side, remove them, and put in others. The batter can also be added with some salt and milk, if needed. Once you have finished the batch, serve the crepes in a bowl and pour on boiled honey mixed with clarified or fresh butter. Finally, sprinkle on pepper, cinnamon and sugar, and then enjoy!

The present-day qatayif are usually deep-fried after stuffing and then drenched in honey or syrup, though there is an unfried stuffed variety, known as qatayif asafiri (قطائف عصافيري), which translates as ‘the sparrows’ qatayif‘. The Andalusian preparation here is actually closest to the modern Moroccan pancake, the baghrir (بغرير), known in Tunisia as ghrayef (غرايف), which is eaten without a filling, just dipped in butter and honey.

This recipe from 13th-century Muslim Spain is a whimsical twist on a popular dish in that period and region, the isfiriyya (اسفريا), a kind of omelette. This particular variation is known as ‘counterfeit’ (مزوّرة, muzawwara), because it uses chickpea (gram) flour to make something that looks like isfiriyya. Gram flour is widely available now, but for the purists, this is how you can make it yourself from scratch (which is both cheaper and more fun, anyway!): pound chickpeas, remove the skins and grind. For the batter, add eggs and yeast, as well as some fennel seeds and other spices. The mixture is pan-fried into a thin cake, like a crepe. Serve with honey or a melted cheese mixture — an irresistable delicacy that will make you come back for seconds!

There is an interesting historical coda, as these pancakes appear to have received a second lease of life in Italy, where they are known as farinata, primarily associated with Liguria and Genoa, which is (wrongly!) credited as being its birthplace. It is also found in other Italian regions, under different names, like cecina (Tuscany), while along the French Riviera it appears as socca. Interestingly enough, its only modern avatar on the Iberian Peninsula is the national dish of Gibraltar, calentita.

Although the recipe appears in a 13th-century Andalusian cookery book, it was said to be a specialty of the people of Fez, which at the time was the capital of the Marinid sultanate, a Berber empire. This also explains the clearly Berber name of the sweet, tārfist (تارفست). It starts with flatbreads being baked in the oven before being crumbled up. The crumbs are then stirred into a mixture of water and honey, coloured with saffron. The end result is a paste which, after hardening, is shaped into a ring with some clarified butter (ghee) being poured into the hole in the middle. Serve with a sprinkling of sugar, cinnamon, spikenard, cloves, and taffy (fānīd, فانيد).

Ideally, this bread should be made in a traditional clay oven, known as the tannūr (تنور), but in case you don’t have access to one, feel free to use a good home oven. The dough is made with flour, dried cheese (for best results use drained cottage cheese), twenty eggs (yes, you read that right), and milk. The seasonings for the dough include fenugreek, mastic, anise, nigella, coriander, sesame and caraway seeds. Shape the dough into loaves and then bake. This bread is absolutely scrumptious and ideal to make last week’s sandwiches.

A 13th-century recipe for a bread you can either make with white flour or semolina. Add yeast, salt and warm water, and knead into loaves of your choosing ; for the recreation it was decided to make small round ones. Leave to rise before baking, and that’s it! In addition, they are stamped with home-made bread stamps. The stamping of food goes back to Antiquity and was also widely used in the medieval Muslim world, often to mark ownership (think of the famous apple in the Arabian Nights story of the Three Apples), or simply as a gimmick, when it could involve an animal, a saying, etc. (which would also be extended to tableware). Two of the stamps contain text: كُل هَنِيئًا (kul hani’an, ‘Eat and enjoy’, i.e. bon appétit) and وليمة السلطان (walīmat al-sultān, ‘the Sultan’s Feast’). The third and fourth stamps represent a gazelle and a geometric design, respectively.

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This recipe, which is found in 13th- and 15th-century Egyptian cookery books, is the ancestor to the modern Lebanese favourite. Its name betrays a Turkish origin and it is likely that the dish was imported by Turkic tribes from the Central Asian steppes. The oldest recorded ravioli-type dish is the Chinese laowan from the third century CE. The Egyptian recipe requires dough to be made like tuṭmāj, from which round shapes are cut. After adding the stuffing (meat, spikenard, saffron, onion, mint), fold like ravioli and then boil in water. They are served with either yoghurt or macerated pomegranate seeds extract. It’s a good idea to make a good-sized batch so you have enough to freeze for future lunches!

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